of the Melroses should "make good" with his
associate workers as if she had been still a little clerk from Biretta's
Bookshop!

But cheerfully indifferent as he was to everything that made life worth
living to such a man as Christopher Liggett, she knew that he would not
go to California without her unless there was a definite break between
them. She knew she could not persuade him to leave her here, as a normal
and pleasant solution, just until everything was settled, and until they
could see a little further ahead. No, Wolf was annoyingly conventional
where his wife was concerned: her place was with him, unless for some
secondary reason they had decided to part. And she knew that if he let
her go it would be because he felt that he never should have claimed
her--that, in the highest sense, he never had had her at all.

CHAPTER XXXII

Moving automatically through the solemn scenes of the next two days,
that, mused Norma, must be the solution. Wolf must go alone to
California. Not because she did not love him--who could help loving him
indeed?--but because she loved Chris more--or differently, at least, and
she belonged to Chris's world now, by every right of birth, wealth, and
position.

"Of course you must stay here," Chris said, positively, on the one
occasion when they spoke of her plans. "In the first place, there is the
estate to settle, we shall need you. Then there are books--pictures--all
that sort of thing to manage, the old servants to dispose of, and
probably this house to sell--but we can discuss that. Judge Lee has felt
for a long time that this is the right site for a big apartment house,
especially if we can get hold of Boyer's plot. You had better take a
suite at one of the hotels, and later we can look up the right sort of
an apartment for you."

Not a word of his personal hopes; missing them she felt oddly cheated.

"Wolf goes to California next month," she said. Christopher gave her a
sharp, quizzing look.

"But I think you had decided, weeks ago, that you were not going?"

"Yes--I've told him so!" she faltered. She felt strangely lost and
forlorn, releasing her hold on Wolf, and yet not able to claim
Christopher's support. It was contemptible--it was weak in her, she
felt, but she could not quite choke down her hunger for one reassuring
word from Chris. "I feel so--lonely, Chris," she said.

He gave a quick, uneasy glance about the breakfast-room, where they were
having a hasty t